


A Pretty Trick

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Devil's Cub - Georgette Heyer, HEYER Georgette - Works
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5819524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary and Vidal steal an unchaperoned moment in the rose garden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pretty Trick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueteak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueteak/gifts).



> A fandom-stocking gift for blueteak. The title is adapted from Ingrid Bergman's remark about kisses being a lovely trick to stop speech when words become superfluous - I couldn't resist the echo of the Heyer-ish idiom about a 'pretty trick' being a sneaky, either amusingly underhanded or totally dastardly action.

"We are the _devil_ of a scandal," Dominic Alastair said, with no little satisfaction.

His fiancée, walking quietly and decorously along the garden path on his arm, adjusted her hat slightly. This might have been because it sat ill on her chestnut curls, or it might have been so that she could shoot him a mild, suspicious look up at him from her clear grey eyes. "I did not think you cared for such things, my lord," she said, in tones which very strongly suggested that she knew perfectly well he didn't care a straw.

Dominic was getting very good at hearing his Mary's unspoken remarks, especially since - in Paris, and closely watched - she felt she could not speak as plainly as she had before. He found this newfound skill of his pleasing; the contrast between what she said and what she meant, and the failure of others present to understand the latter, was deeply amusing to him.

"I don't," he said, and added insistently, " _Mary_."

"I am persuaded it would not be thought proper if I were to call you Dominic in public," Mary said, unmoved. She brushed a hand along the silk of her dress, freeing it of several pale fallen petals, blushed pink in contrast to the dress's soft blue; it was a colour that suited her particularly well, and Dominic reminded himself to buy her some sapphires for a wedding-gift. "And I am supposed to be a pattern-card of propriety, in order to scotch the scandal you so perceptively mentioned."

"Our only chaperone is my aunt Fanny and she has just been waylaid by one of her elderly admirers," Dominic complained, glancing back over his shoulder to make certain that this was still true. His aunt's figure was rapidly receding into the distance. "Who are you expecting to notice?"

Mary lifted her head, her face the picture of serenity. "Why, in that case - no-one. As no-one will notice if we stop to admire the roses, I assume."

Dominic blinked, and then grinned. The rose garden was mere moments away, and it was always delightfully secluded. "My love, you never cease to surprise me."

"I do not think a boring wife would answer," Mary said, and looked very thoughtfully up at him from under the brim of her (if you asked Dominic, rather overloaded) hat. "Not for you."

"No," Dominic said, catching the mischief in the curve of her mouth and ushering her solicitously into the rose garden, before looking back again to make sure that Fanny Marling had not seen them enter. His aunt would undoubtedly guess what they had done - but they would have a few minutes' more grace if she did not have the evidence of her own eyes.

As it happened, she was entirely occupied with the Comte de something or other - Dominic had never troubled to learn the names of most of his aunt's flirts, and was only pleased to know that this one made a fine distraction from Dominic's own behaviour. Dominic let himself quietly into the rose garden, and caught up with Mary.

Mary was admiring a particularly beautiful bush of red roses a little way on, but when he joined her she turned her face to him like that flower to the sun and smiled her real smile - not the polite one she made so much use of here in Paris, not the reserved, cool one he first remembered seeing from her, but the real one that took up most of her elegant face and transformed it, in his eyes, to a beauty's.

He set his hands to her waist and kissed that smiling mouth, and Mary's breath caught in her throat as it always did at the first touch of their lips, her smaller hands resting on his chest as she leant into him. He couldn't yet read that little catch of breath: surprise, perhaps, or pleasure? He didn't know what it meant, and he hadn't had the chance to ask.

I have my whole life to find out, he reminded himself, and settled down to the important business of giving her more reasons to smile.


End file.
